What is the ultimate purpose of making a film ? Is it to entertain the audience or is it to convey something the director want to tell ? What should be the priorities of a filmmaker when shooting a written script ? Many answers are slithering through your mind now.But I can't make a comment on this questions directly because I want to discuss this questions with you in detail and at the end of this write up, I hope you could find my points.
Let me take your attention to the comments of two well-known filmmakers on the so called big scale commercial films.Before that,I want to make sure that my dear readers are reading this writeup with an open mind to think about the ideas I am going to mention now.
You may have known about Martin Scorsese's comment on Marvel films.I had seen his interviews at the time of Irishman's release and how beautifully he presented his ideas is really appreciable.He commented that marvel films are not actual films they are theme park movies and theatres are gradually changing to the mood of amusement parks.I know that you can't agree with him at your first thought on this comment.But let me explain with some more details.
I hope you remember the question I have asked you in the beginning of this writeup.What is the ultimate purpose of making a film ? I think there are many purposes.Among these, the first priority is to convey the things director or writer want to convey without losing its aesthetic sense.The second one is to entertain the audience and make financial profit. It is difficult but possible to meet these two purposes when making a film. Now coming back to Scorsese's comment, he commented about the compromising mentality of director in the primary motive of making a film. Other than entertainment, cinema is a revelation both social and mental revelation. A cinema should have a soul and this soul can exist inside the film only if the basic and primary motive of filmmaking have considered with enough priority in execution. Hollywood is saturating to franchise films,super heros and comic based audiovisual entertainment.What they focus is only on the commercial aspects of filmmaking.They want to make a heavy rush into theaters and earn more financial profit.Today cinema is a business to earn money and its aesthetic part is thrusting to back seat.
We will get a clear picture of this issue when we connect Scorsese's comments with Adoor Gopalakrishnan's disagreement with bahubali style movies.In a conclave,he openly expressed that Bahubali is an exaggeration of technology and films like Bahubali should not be entertained.When checking his points with current trends of Indian cinema,we have to agree with Adoor's statement.This doesn't mean that Bahubali is a bad film.I love Bahubali and I am a great admirer of Rajamouli.The point is about the trendsetting feature of Bahubali.Now you may think that what's wrong with it's trendsetting feature.Yes,there is a problem.As I mentioned earlier,the aesthetic part or the artistic quality of the content and its execution had compromised here.Bahubali projects a technical boom of this era with a told story.Cinema is an art and technology had been used in cinema to make a director's vision into reality.But today,things are changed.Stories are using today to showcase the technologies like cgi vfx and other audio visual effects.Through this people get entertainment and producer gets huge financial profit.Do you think this as a healthy trend ? If you are coming to theatres to see this audiovisual entertainment and nibbling snacks,I am sorry I can't reinforce you to follow this trend.
A film gets it's shape only if it's artistic features have taken uncompromisingly.The hollywood franchise films and Indian crore club films are amorphous.And a trend of marketing a film with it's crore club potential is unhealthy to keep it's aesthetic part.Bahubali got national award and that was a perplexing decision from national award jury.The standard of judgement and compromise for suffusing this big budget trend in society are visible in this decision.When we talk about hollywood,most of the talks are based on franchise super hero films and look at the uncompromising academy award of this year.A non English feature film got oscar awards for best film,screenplay and direction.Parasite definitely deserve these awards but more than that, the lack of good content oriented films in hollywood persuaded the jury to take their focus on foreign films.Similarly,when we meet a friend outside of India and have a discussion on Indian films they talk about Bahubali,2.0,KGF,Thanhaji,etc.Because our marketers and promoters are keeping their time to spread this trend to all over the world and world get a picture about current Indian cinema based on this crore club trend following films.But we want to talk about films like Article 15,Tumbbad,Super deluxe,Uyare,Pink,etc.But unfortunately they are talking about crore club movies only.
Now I think my readers got an idea and importance about the questions I have raised in the beginning.What I have written here is just a glimpse of the issues I mentioned here.I hope my readers would think about this issue and feel free to make your comments on this topic.
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